The Kindly One

XVI. The Apprentice

Learning to read elven was a slow, though not arduous, process. It was a strange language, very different from the Sigília. It sounded sweet and fluid, drifting from syllable to syllable like a singer from note to note. The script of Nicol's tome was neat and flowing, written in a delicate hand and emerald ink on thin pages. Iona was always painstakingly careful when she turned a page, so as not to tear the fragile paper. She spent months pouring over that book and Nicol's notes, at least when she wasn't pestering the experienced mage with questions or practicing manipulation magic.

She had struggled for most of her life with learning magic. Now, under the tutelage of Radek and Nicol, suddenly she was making progress by leaps and bounds. She felt like a bird taking wing for the first time. The shackles of her family's history were gone. She was just Iona Velane, a quiet but skilled apprentice who happened to be half elven. She was making friends, people who respected her for what she could do and wanted to be on good terms with her. There were compliments, congratulations, and other things that she'd never really experienced before coming from all kinds of directions. The only downside seemed to be that she hadn't had much room to see Kája between her studies and the spellguard's duties.

Ctirad and Eider were becoming good friends, and she'd even seen Ciar a time or two when he stopped by some of the libraries to shelve books. The central library at the heart of the Pharos was massive. The collection, carefully shielded from sun and other bright lights in a giant cylindrical room where the air was cool and dry, had to number in the millions, rather than the bare hundreds she'd seen in Yssa's royal library. There were so many volumes that Iona knew that even an elven lifetime might not have been long enough to even acquaint herself with every book. There were texts in every language under the sun and many more dead ones, preserved scrolls and saved standing stones graven with ancient writings. Many of the pieces in the collection were First World texts, treatises on magic, alchemy, nature, and existence. There were star charts and astrological signs, old treaties and histories, saved alchemical formula books, and scorched forbidden tomes rescued from the flames of purification. It was Iona's favorite room in her new home. Just being close to the books, breathing in their vanilla scent, made her feel connected to something beyond ancient. It inspired the same reverence as primordial forest, majestic mountains, and the unfathomable depths of the sea.

This was the sum of the knowledge of more than just humans. There were secrets of dwarven artifice smuggled out of the Low Kingdoms, recorded lore of orcs and the other wild races, volumes of elven poetic histories and assorted lore, and even sorcerous texts wrested from the claws of terrifying demons. Some, she'd heard, were copies donated by the Imperium itself from the collection of the demon lords, the Princes of Iron themselves. It was magic, though, that held a special place in Iona's heart. She spent weeks on every page of the few elven magical tomes there were, each pass over a paragraph bringing new secrets to life. They were written in almost cyphered ways, but she had been around her mother long enough to understand the word games that elves indulged in.

In the Pharos, Iona finally felt like she belonged, like she was no longer trapped between worlds.

Right now, however, she was following Nicol deep into the Ossuary, back in the city proper. She still hadn't had a chance to explore the city as much as she would have liked, but only because she was too caught up exploring the many halls and libraries of the Pharos. "What's down here?" the half elf asked, catching the sickly-sweet smell of decay that was only growing stronger and stronger. Her curiosity was mingled with a slight disgust as they descended. She stepped around a beetle trundling across a floor damp with mildew. The walls were lined with rows upon rows of bones and cobwebs.

"Mine...charges," Nicol said without looking back. "And practice for thee."

Iona had no trouble seeing in the dim light cast by that flickering blue mage-fire, so she made it down without a stumble. Apparently elves had good vision by nature and she was fortunate to have inherited that much from her mother. These days, her blood didn't feel like a curse. "Practice?" she said, nerves returning. She'd been studying with Nicol for almost a year now, and it was a fascinating experience...if frequently a somewhat unsettling one.